X-Mas Card!

Copy/paste. Format them for cards in the program of your choice. It works best to print them on red cardstock.

What Your Friends Never Knew About You (a horror story)

Part 1: Instructions on how to read What Your Friends Never Knew About You

This story contains numerous, unintelligible sounds. Including:

HWUAHOOOOPHESTO – This sound is like the feeling of walking through a graveyard with a former love interest, an ex, if you will. Perhaps the two of you have are slightly drunk after a mutual friend’s party. She/he has asked you to walk them home and of course, the two of you have decided to take a shortcut through the graveyard. You begin talking about the past the two of you once shared. He/she asks if there was anything they could have done to change how things ended up. It's at that moment where you see a human form pass between two large headstones, but with more a brilliant luminance than any person could possess. You ask him/her if they saw that. He/she says "See what? You're trying to dodge the question." But you know they saw it. Then you realize that it was their idea to take the graveyard shortcut all along. That sudden loss of breath you experience—the feeling of not having the wind knocked out of you, but having your ribcage punctured and your lungs pushed up into your esophagus—is how to pronounce that word.

HATHEEEETHAHAASHHHH – Pretty self-explanatory, really. This is the sound that your three-year old son makes when you ask where he got those scissors. He doesn't respond, but turns and begins stabbing the air toward you. "Stop it," you say, laughing at his misappropriation of the scissors because he is far too young to know the harm they can do, how they can be used as a weapon. He doesn't stop. You reach for the scissors and he stabs your hand deep enough to break the skin. The boy laughs maniacally and comes at you. You run to the bathroom and lock the door to wait for your spouse to come home.

COOOWOOSHAROOAGH – This sound is a little trickier to describe, but think how it must feel to bring dead tissue back to life. Popular literature and movies have not dissuaded you from pursuing the gift of eternal life. This is especially true when your best friend becomes involved in a horrific, decapitating car accident. You wait it out, keep the head on ice while you endure the obligatory mourning/therapy sessions to convince yourself and others around you that doing anything rash would be crazy, mad even. You are not a mad scientist. But time for getting your best friend is nigh—it's not your fault that it happens to be on a dark and stormy night. Right when the head achieves consciousness, there is a knock at your door. You throw a sheet over it and see who it is. It turns out to be the wife of your best friend. Despite the time since the accident, she still can't shake her husband’s tragic death and has sought your companionship for comfort. The rain has soaked her. She begins to cuddle. She's confused, possibly drunk. You run your fingers through her hair and she stares up at you. You know she's not seeing you, but her husband, whose head is buried under a sheet in your room. Then, she begins to kiss you and you don't stop it. You kiss so passionately that you don’t notice the thump from other room, the strained rolling. When the head of your best friend finds you kissing his wife, it emits the COOOWOOSHAROOAGH. It's a passing of air meant for a scream, the sound of a heart breaking where there is no heart.

CTSHCTCHKIII – The sound of scuttling. Terrible, unholy scuttling.

PIBTHSH – This would be the soundtrack to those dreams you have where your teeth fall out.

GHAWHOOOR – Finally, this is a sound you've heard, but you don’t know it. It's a subliminal sound that signals the release of the endorphins usually ascribed to fear (or sometimes excitement or orgasm, which is easy to see why it's so easy to get all three confused). But this sound is fear building inside. The sight of blood triggers it. You don't know where the blood is coming from, but your body is telling you "something's wrong". And then you see it. The non-sound rings in your ears, deafens you. Makes you blind the broken windows, lamps and glass around you, but not the resting place of your childhood doll, which is not where it was when you left.

Part 2: What Your Friends Never Knew About You

"I know how to summon ghosts," you say. "I bet you never knew this about me." You summon a terrible ghost and it says COOOWOOSHAROOAGH! Sally keeps saying "Look at those eyes! Look at those eyes!" and cries HATHEEEETHAHAASHHHH. She’s almost too scared to talk: GHAWHOOOR. You try to make it stop but the ghost is just too terrible. HWUAHOOOOPHESTO! You think it's gone, but then one last PIBTHSH and then CTSHCTCHKIII. The ghost appears to be gone. For now.

Black Candies, Halloween Lit Zine

Stores by Ryan Bradford, Michael Gillham, Natanya Ann Pulley, and Jay Wertzler. Art by Julia Gualtieri and Zandria Ann Sturgill. Want a copy? All you have to do is ask. Send me an email: avclub.bradford@gmail.com

"Write about a pet with a job."

Seriously, this is good advice. Nothing I can do to make this better. Make sure it hates Mondays and working with "ruff" clients.

"Change a 'no' to 'yes' and see what happens."

Three things can happen: you get the girl, you get the job, you get fries with that.

"What if you finally did what you always wanted to do?"

And it wasn't illegal in nearly every state except parts of the south.

Zing!

"Write about a painful loyalty"

Because someone needs to pay for the forced separation of you and your deformed, twin brother. You think he likes to spend all day in that basket?

"Write about the painting beneath the painting."

I think those are called Magic Eyes.

"Write about a meeting that goes on so long it becomes something other than a meeting."

And at what point it becomes "Clothes Optional".

"Are all your characters reasonably attractive?"

Or are they, like, uggos?

"Write about the first time you conversed with a stranger."

In hindsight, it doesn't seem so romantic from the bottom of that pit, does it?

"Write about a confinement: physical or mental, welcome or unwelcome, imaginary or real."

Animal or plant, liquid or viscous, cage or handcuffs.

"Write about what got left behind on accident."

And what it grew up to be and how big its teeth got.

"Write in a voice of someone talking absurdly fast."

Rip the the space bar out of your keyboard.

"How did your parents meet?"

That's the cutest suicide pact-story I've ever heard.

"Write about the first one to quit."

And how good he tasted.

"Write about that one thing you never mentioned about that trip."

Because all superheroes/serial killers need an origin story.

"When asked for a solution to writer's block, poet William Safford said: I just lower my standards and keep on going."

Same advice works for getting herpes.

"Write about the last time you went to a church--what brought you there?"

Murdering your adopted, Antichrist son is the best answer. Bonus points if you're Gregory Peck.

"Write about the last day of your first job."

And the satisfaction you felt knowing they'll never get that stain out of the carpet.

"Write about a beautiful evening ruined by a bad joke"

And the joke is actually more of a prank. And it's a prank that involves adhesives, a scalpel and Garbage Pail Kid cards.

"Write about the last time you jumped to the wrong conclusion"

And how many children paid dearly for it.

"Turn off your computer and reintroduce yourself to a pen."

And try to remember how it got lodged up there in the first place.

"What's the most you ever paid for something you didn't want?"

Was it the for location of your wife's head? I bet it was for the location of your wife's head.

"Open an imaginary door. What do you see?"

Or, what the fuck did you just let out?

My mom once bought me this book called the The Pocket Muse. I'm gonna take some of the advice from the book (quoted) and add words to it to make it better.